We are huge fans of HashCo and so are our customers. We recently sat down with Amy Brown, legacy-to-legal cannabis entrepreneur. Amy is like family to Stok’d and we are blessed to be in a community with folks like her. Below is an edited and condensed version of our conversation. To find out more about HashCo click here.
Stok’d: What is your cannabis background? How did you get into this community as well as the industry?
Amy: I used cannabis throughout my high school years. However, in 2005 I got into a terrible car accident where I broke my neck, pelvis and shattered my wrist. I was prescribed pain killers by my doctor and eventually became addicted to them(through no fault of my own). I was just doing what the doctor told me to do. At one point, I was told by a loved one that I developed an addiction. I realized they were right, and I cut myself off pain killers cold turkey and replaced them with cannabis. One of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life!
Stok’d: Were you a cannabis consumer before the accident?
Amy: Until I got into the car accident, I only used cannabis recreationally. After the car accident, I did a lot of research on what was good for pain and cannabis kept coming up, so I started using cannabis medically. Back then, 17 years ago, as a new mother I didn’t think it was appropriate for me to be smoking around my child, so I started using and making edibles and a cannabis baking brand was born. I also started working for Eastern Canada’s first medical dispensary, CALM (Cannabis As Living Medicine) That’s how I got started in the industry.
Stok’d: Switching gears a little bit here, can you tell us a bit about The Hash Corporation, the background and values of the company?
Amy: The Hash Corporation was founded in 2019 by our CEO, Chris Savoie and three other individuals. Everyone on our team comes from the legacy industry. We’re all people who were doing this before legalization and then transferred over to the legal market. I started with the company in 2021. We’re not a large company, we’re a small company that fits a niche market. HashCo is made up of a group of passionate individuals from the legacy market. We’re people who really appreciate the plant and who have the utmost respect for cannabis. HashCo makes beautiful, traditional hashes that are now on the legal market. We’re very big on community as opposed to just sell, sell, sell. We come from the community that made this legal and we celebrate, respect and appreciate that.
Stok’d: Besides your amazing hash, HashCo has made a big splash with smoking accessories. Can you talk about the Hash Kettle and Lantern? Is that an evolution or are you still gonna carry both of those products?
Amy: Evolution. The Hash Kettle and Hash Lantern are devices we created with an amazing glass blower also from the legacy market named Drew aka MastahGlass. These smoking devices allow you to enjoy pure hash smoke with no secondary smoke. Back in the day we always had to use tobacco or flower to enjoy hash unless we were doing hot knives. We’ve stopped making the Kettle for now, but it’s not to say that it won’t come back. Both the Kettle and Lantern work incredibly well but for now we’ve moved on to the Lantern, which is a tad bit easier to operate for people who have dexterity issues. Let’s be real, unless you’re doing hot knives, smoking without tobacco or cannabis flower can be difficult. But with the Hash Kettle and Hash Lantern it’s just pure hash smoke.
Stok’d: We’ve noticed that HashCo only sells them through cannabis retailers. Is there any plan to have a direct to consumer version of those products?
Amy: Not at the moment. We prefer to wholesale them to retail, it brings business into retailers and that’s our family. The cannabis industry is a small community in this very large world. We want to support people that support us and it just makes sense to be in retailers because that’s where people go to purchase our products.
Stok’d: What would be your favourite hash experience?
Amy: I’m gonna go back to Grade 11
Stok’d Please do
Amy: I smoked an incredible amount of hash back then but one of my favourite memories is just having a plastic Chubby’s bottle in my backpack and hash in my pocket on a quarter. I went out between classes to do some BT’s. My best memories of hash was just hanging out with my friends at the “smoking tree”. When I smoke our hash now, it brings me right back to those days.
To read more great hash stories, check out our recent article: A People’s History of Hash
Stok’d: What’s next for HashCo?
Amy: Our reputation is that we make really great hash, so we will stick to that. It’s not to say we won’t do anything else in the future but for now we are just going to continue doing exactly what we’ve done for so many years. We just want to continue putting out beautiful, clean, traditional hash.